A site about the ephemerality of the socio-urban world

Exploring our Techno-Societies: A Kickstarter Project

The intensification of technology is a process that we can no longer ignore. Stephen Hawking recently said Artificial Intelligence could end mankind, televisions are spying on us, Hollywood blockbusters warn of dystopic futures. These ‘big’ ideas about technology are critical to the debate about what it means to be human and have been raging for sometime, but on a more societal, everyday level, our human interactions are evermore being replaced by technological ones. Buying food from a machine, talking to computers on the phone, automated passport controls, searching for friends and soul mates online, sharing a joke with your smart phone’s operating system, checking into hotels via a smart phone – there is a layer of technology that is replacing our everyday connections with the people around us, a layer that is becoming increasingly invisible but all-encompassing.

In light of this, I’m embarking upon quite an ambitious project. It’s a bit experimental, but something I think hugely worthwhile. Essentially, I aim to conduct three social scientific experiments or ‘challenges’ that will test just how far I can go by living solely via technological interfaces. I want to make a documentary film (and write an accompanying book) that explores how technology is making our economic and social interactions more efficient, but also how they are making us interact less with humans for our everyday needs. This has all manner of societal implications about sociality, family life, loneliness, technological politics, workers rights and a host of many other crucial debates.

So I have created a Kickstarter page to try and raise the funds needed to conduct the project. Please consider contributing, because I believe that such a project has the potential to have a vast impact academically, politically and culturally. Please feel free to email me (olimould@gmail.com) or tweet me for more information.